Eating Ortolans
Second Place Winner in the 2019 Ada Limón Autumn Poetry Contest
My first love consumed me / fast, the way an oyster / which slides unbroken past the teeth / is pressed apart by the tongue. / She was the first women my mouth / knew and from the very first, / in that dirty pink-tile bathroom, / I understood how it felt / to want something until my lips / went raw.
Poetry by Kate Leland
The Gift
Awarded Third Place in the 2019 Ada Limón Autumn Poetry Contest
Once, I gave my mother a memoir, I Just Lately / Started Buying Wings. There was a mother in it / like my mother’s mother: cold then slightly warmer / as my mother grew, as her tennis shoes climbed / closer to gas pedal and brake
Poetry by Lucas Jorgensen
Dear Elizabeth Smart
Runner-up in the 2019 Ada Limón Autumn Poetry Contest
I read in a book review that you wrote My Story with a ghost. / Days after hearing your voice, / I am haunted and frantically write you / in a pocket notebook, afraid of forgetting.
Poetry by Dani DiCenzo
Some Nights We Have the Moon
Runner-up in the 2019 Ada Limón Autumn Poetry Contest
There are no swans here, just corn / and potatoes pushing past small- / town dirt. I want to be done / with want, so I tell my feet / to stalk the wheat
Poetry by L. Renée
Wear Your Seatbelt / X and Y Squared / Husk and Core
I practice the front crawl. I push. I breathe. I sturdy myself. I blow out when my head’s in. See and hear the gurgle. In order to keep myself aligned.
Flash Fiction by Kim Chinquee